Could The OA be the new Stranger Things? All we know so far about Netflix's mysterious new show

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Netflixare being unusually tight-lipped about their latest original series The OA. Beside a few casting announcements, we heard nothing at all about the show until the first trailer was released on Monday, just days before the show's launch.

Meanwhile, the show's Instagram account has offered a tantalising glimpse at what Netflix have called a "mysterious drama with a supernatural element," with a series of provocative but bewildering images.

What's it about?

The show tells the story of Prairie Johnson, a blind woman who disappeared from her quiet mid-western hometown. When she reappears seven years later, she is no longer blind – and may have lost her memory.

At one point in the eerie new trailer, we watch Prairie apparently entering a Stranger Things-esque isolation tank.

A still from the trailer for The OACredit:
Netflix

One character asks her: "Do you remember any of the events that led up to your disappearance?" Her blank expression suggests she doesn't, but her next words hint that she may know more than she's letting on:

"I didn't disappear – I was present for all of it," she says. "The biggest mistake I made was believing if I cast a beautiful net I'd catch only beautiful things." What could it mean? So far, we haven't the foggiest – but it's all rather exciting.

Who's behind it?

The show's co-creators are director Zal Batmanglij and writer/actor Brit Marling, who also stars as Prairie. Both have a history of working in off-kilter science fiction: Batmanglij directed several episodes of M Night Shyamalan's sub-Twin Peaks mystery Wayward Pines, while Marling has starred in Mike Cahill's sci-fi films Another Earth (2011) and I Origins (2014), both of which made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival.

The pair have previously worked together as co-writers on Batmanglij's 2013 spy thriller The East, and on his 2011 sci-fi film Sound of My Voice, in which Marling played a mysterious cult leader who claims to be a time-traveller from the future.

A screengrab from the trailer for The OACredit:
Netflix

Who's in it?

Besides Marling, the cast includes Jason Isaacs (best known as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films), Emory Cohen (Brooklyn) and Phyllis Smith (The Office US), but details about their characters have yet to be revealed.

The Walking Dead's Scott Wilson will play Abel Johnson, Prairie's adoptive father, while Deadline reports that newcomer Brandon Perea will play French, “a senior on his high school lacrosse team and Ivy League candidate with a troubled home life who plans to study microbiology and chemistry.”